Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/07/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]You make my day bearable. - -----Original Message----- From: kyle cassidy [mailto:kcassidy@asc.upenn.edu] Sent: 23 July 2002 16:16 To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: [Leica] 'this is how the photo business works.... So, a few months ago I get a call from Artemis records. Am the guy who photographed Carfax Abbey? Indeed. Can I fly to Ohio in two weeks to photograph Lollippplustkill? Sadly the dates don't work for me. No problem, Artemis will fly the band to Philadelphia. Shall they work out details with my assistant? My assistant? I put down the phone and pick it up again speaking in a deeper voice, "This is Mr. Cassidy's assistant. Please send a CD, Mr. Cassidy will get back to you." They send me a CD. It's fantastic. I call back in a deep voice, "This is Mr. Cassidy's assistant. He likes the CD and would be happy to photograph the band." Artemis puts six guys on an airplane and ships them out to the East Coast. Then they fly two record company execs plus one manager down from New York to look over my shoulder and make me nervous. Can the Leicaslacker perform when people are actually paying him? The makeup artist and hairstylist take over my living room with aluminum cases filled with potions and powders. I'm so baffled by the whole thing I take a bunch of pictures of the whirlwind in my house. Nobody wonders where my assistant is, the place is filled with so many sychophants they assume that within the various colliding entourages some of them must be mine. I wonder briefly if I should have called some models and had them lounge around the place drinking martini's. The bass player pops their CD into the sterio and stands between the speakers in a trance, leaning forward, eyes closed, windows rattling. I'm wondering if the band is going to trash my place. Oddly enough, they're all very polite and use coasters. They look through my portfolio and say it's a little "too edgy" for them. Is this not the band who sings "Kill my mother, Kill my father, I want to watch you DIE!"? The band who's new album is called "My Socalled Knife" is wigged out by pictures of dead rats and girls cutting themselves? The guitar player asks Linda if she ever worries about hell. It seems to be troubling him deeply. At midnight the record company execs take us out to a fancy hotel bar where most of the band proceeds to get incredibly wasted (with the exception of one guy who doesn't drink; he eats a lot of trailmix), I photograph them scaring people in the lobby. There is a Cutco convention in the hotel and one of the guitar players grabs a sword out of a presentation display and runs around the bar screaming and waving it in the air. I get great stuff. The band gets spotted by fans. They autograph cocktail napkins. One of them goes upstairs with a pair of girls. Linda and I drink a hundred dollars worth of cosmopolitians. The band drinks considerably more. The record exec puts it on his corporate AmEx. The next morning we drive to numerous locations in a swank rented van, I photograph more. They've rented the lobbey of the Hotel Softel. we shoot there too. One of my strobes breaks. One of my cameras jams. I pretend that nothing is wrong. Why did my assistant forget to bring the bracket that connects the umbrella to the stand? Where is my assistant? Obviously, I fired that irrisponsible bastard for not bringing the proper umbrella bracket. I tape the umbrella to the stand with gaffers tape. Periodically I speak into the dialtone of my cell phone barking things like "If it's not properly color corrected I take my business elsewhere. Don't fuc|< with me you little weasel; you're not the only pro lab in town." The record execs seem pleased by this. We shoot for two days. I make somewhere around twelve hundred exposures. They pay me handsomely, somehow not having figured out in 48 hours that I'm a complete fraud. Three months later I get a copy of the CD in the mail, containing three of my most lackluster images, one intentionally blurred and two montaged with someone elses photos the band's only in two of the photos, it looks swell but what about all those great shots? You can't really see the band, let alone expensive hair and makeup. No wonder CD's cost a fortune.... If you like Korn and Tool, you'll probably like LLK..... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000066JH5/qid=1027433650/sr=2-1/ref= sr_2_1/102-3603718-9599307 Capitol letters inserted for Jim Brick. kc No Archive - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient(s) named above. 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